The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Moss, Utah run past West Virginia
DALLAS — Zack Moss took a third-down handoff and quickly burst through the line and into an opening in the middle of the field. Utah was off and running to another bowl victory.
Moss ran for 150 yards, including a career-long 58-yard run for a touchdown on the Utes’ opening drive in the Heart of Dallas Bowl on way to a 30-14 win over West Virginia on Tuesday. They are now 11-1 in postseason games under Kyle Whittingham, who matched Alabama’s Nick Saban for the most bowl wins by an active coach.
“He knows how to coach the team and he always caps the year off right,” Utah sophomore quarterback Tyler Huntley said.
Huntley scored twice, both on 2-yard keepers, but they led for good in their fifth straight bowl victory after Moss broke free on a drizzly and chilly day in Cotton Bowl Stadium.
“It was very important for us to come out of the gates with a big play early on and set the tone,” said Moss, who like Huntley still has two seasons left with the Utes (7-6).
West Virginia (7-6) finished the season with its third straight loss. The Mountaineers had only 153 total yards without junior quarterback Will Grier, who broke a finger Nov. 18, and 1,000-yard rusher Justin Crawford, a senior who bypassed the bowl game in advance of the NFL draft.
“It was a pretty disappointing loss to end a pretty disappointing season,” Mountaineers coach Dana Holgorsen said. “You never hear me use it as an excuse. If you lose guys, you need guys to step in and play at a high level and that is the bottom line.”
Whittingham’s debut as head coach was a Fiesta Bowl win at the end of the 2004 season. He co-coached that game with Urban Meyer, who had taken the Florida job three weeks earlier but returned to be part of Utah’s postseason win over Pittsburgh after his defensive coordinator had been promoted to head coach.
Under Whittingham, the Utes prepare for bowl games like regular season games, often in full pads and with continuing conditioning work. There is also a little bit of peer pressure.
“We’ve got a group of guys and have had several groups of guys come here that take a lot of pride in their bowl performance and the bowl record that we have,” Whittingham said. “This group was no different. Each subsequent group doesn’t want to be the group that lets the previous groups down. They want to keep that bowl prowess alive.”